In the vending industry, coins and bills have been one manner used to pay for vended goods and services. In this regard, when a vending account is to be settled, coins and bills can be collected from vending equipment, and the coins and bills can be reconciled with the physical inventory to determine what was sold and how much money was collected.
In recent years, cashless payments, for example credit cards, have become an option for payments. In this regard, a user of vending equipment may now be able to use cashless payments, in addition to coin and bill payments, for vended goods and services. In the case of cashless payments, a cashless payment can typically be processed by a third party server. Subsequently, an electronic finds transfer (EFT) can remit the cashless payment received, less any transaction processing fees and/or other fees, to an operator of the vending equipment. Even so, in some instances, the EFT may not reconcile an actual vend event with an associated actual cashless transaction. To further complicate matters, the vend sale amount may not match the EFT amount since fees may be deducted from the cashless funds, and oftentimes, the EFT transactions may represent an aggregated batch or bundling of multiple transactions, thus obscuring each individual vend transaction.
The processing of cashless transactions can cause numerous problems for processors handling cashless transactions, vendors offering goods and/or services by way of a vending machine accepting cashless transactions, and others involved in the cashless transaction process. For example, in one settlement process, coins, bills, and cashless transactions may not be timely reconciled with inventory since many cashless transactions may still be stored in a vending machine or other associated data storage device. In other instances, cashless transactions may still be en route to a third party server, not settled yet and/or aggregated with little or no transaction level detail. Oftentimes, only after vend settlement is initiated, may an associated EFT transaction occur, which can further frustrate the settlement process because of the aggregated nature of EFTs.
In addition, the routing of cashless transactions to one or more third party servers can also create an accountability problem. In some instances, multiple items can be vended from a vending machine, and one or more customers may attempt to pay with a cashless implement, such as a credit or debit card. However, in such instances, there is no guarantee that a vending equipment operator will ever see funds for vends paid for by cashless transactions, and no further guarantee that a customer was correctly charged for the vended goods and/or services. As such, there may be little or no accountability as to when vends occurred or what was charged to the customer. Moreover, there may be little or no accountability as to whether a customer was timely and accurately charged, and little or no assurance that a vending equipment operator timely received the correct funds for vends paid for by cashless transactions.
Furthermore, a problem exists in auditing third party servers to verify accuracy and/or correctness of cashless transactions. In this regard, cashless transaction vending can lack oversight, accountability, auditing controls, and the ability to control how a device in the vending equipment operates and how data is communicated with or between various servers or other data processing devices.
Another problem occurs when route personnel attempt to reconcile transaction amounts and inventory at a vending equipment location. In some instances, the amount of bills, coins, cashless vends, and inventory must be known at the same point in time. As related to cashless transactions, this means knowing what the value of each transaction is without any fees removed, knowing which of the cashless transactions have been settled, and also knowing which of the settled cashless transactions have a corresponding EFT record indicating that an operator of the vending equipment has been paid for the cashless transactions. Without this level of detail, it may be unlikely that an accurate or timely vending equipment settlement can be performed without error across multiple vending equipment locations. For vending equipment in global locations, the settlement process may not be performed efficiently.
Therefore, a need exists for systems and methods for providing a vending network.